11 Famous Movies That Had To Scrap Their Original Ending, Then Came Up With Something Better

1.Legally Blonde had to dump its original ending after a test screening went absolutely amazing...until the last five minutes.

Elle Woods wears a pink dress in court as she cross examines a witness

They soon gathered the cast for reshoots, and if you look closely at the new graduation ending and compare it to the rest of the film, you'll notice Witherspoon's hair is redder. This is because she was in the middle of shooting another film, The Importance of Being Earnest, when she did the reshoots.

Witherspoon as Woods with blond hair and Witherspoon as Woods with red hair

You might also notice Luke Wilson's hair doesn't quite look the same. He had to wear a wig because he'd recently shaved his head while filming The Royal Tenenbaums.

MGM

2.Get Out was originally intended to have a much bleaker ending where Chris (played by Daniel Kaluuya) is arrested for the murders of the Armitage family. The final shot of the film would've been Chris wearing an orange jumpsuit behind bars, unlikely to ever see the outside world again.

Chris from Get Out stares at the camera with tears in his eyes

Peele filmed this darker ending (seen below), but it didn't go over well at test screenings. Producer Sean McKittrick told Vulture, "The audience was absolutely loving it, and then it was like we punched everybody in the gut. You could feel the air being sucked out of the room."

3.Happy Death Day was originally supposed to end in a very different place — with Tree dying once more and seemingly remaining stuck in the time loop forever.

Tree stands unaware the killer in a mask stands right behind her

Landon tossed the hated ending and came up with what is seen in the movie where the audience briefly thinks Tree is still stuck in the time loop, then learns Lori is the killer...and the time loop is closed.

A hand desperately grabs for a cupcake
Universal Pictures

So how did Tree die in the original ending? She's killed in the hospital by the wife of Dr. Butler (the professor Tree is having an affair with). You can see it below:

4.Speed was originally meant to fade to black almost immediately after Officer Jack Traven (played by Keanu Reeves) and Annie Porter (Sandra Bullock) got all the hostages safely off the bus — a good 20 minutes before the actual film ended.

Reeves stands over Bullock as she drives the bus at high speed

Interestingly, the production also intended to film the sequence where Keanu and Sandra get the hostages off the bus at Dodger Stadium, but had to relocate it to an airport runway after the Dodgers' ownership balked at the idea.

Dodger Stadium and its parking lot

5.When James Gunn was writing the ending for The Suicide Squad, he at first planned to have two different characters die — and the one who dies in the final film live.

The whole suicide squad stands together

Gunn revealed he initially didn't have Polka-Dot Man as the hero who dies at the end of the final battle. Instead, he wanted to kill off Ratcatcher 2.

Ratcatcher 2 and her rat Sebastian

6.The Lion King was originally planned to end in a fashion guaranteed to traumatize kids — with a final battle where Scar appears to toss Simba off Pride Rock to his death. Oh, and then Scar is overwhelmed by flames and burns to death while cackling about killing Simba, totally unhinged.

Simba leaps and attacks Scar as fire burns around them

This ending also included a direct reference to William Shakespeare's Hamlet, which the movie is partially based on. Scar, before attacking Simba, said "Good night, sweet prince" (the line famously uttered by Horatio in Hamlet).

Disney

This unsettling ending made it to the storyboard phase, but the filmmakers weren't satisfied and continued massaging the scene, which was common. Screenwriter Linda Woolverton told Forbes, "Things evolve with storyboards. … Then you go back in and you rewrite again or you actually rewrite again on the board itself. ... It starts to evolve from there."

7.Writer/director James Cameron's instincts were just about perfect when making the classic Titanic, but — how can I put this nicely? — his original planned ending was so bad it would have ruined the whole movie.

DiCaprio and Winslet stand at the front of the boat, smiling

Cameron, to his credit, quickly realized while editing the film that this ending didn't work, and he reworked it into the ending that helped Titanic win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

8.The original ending of Escape Room saw Zoey returning to her college dorm room and finding a clue in one of her puzzle books that suggested the games were about to start again. However, this smaller, more conventional ending bombed with test audiences.

A man screams in agony

What Robitel came up with was the pulse-pounding ending on a plane we think Zoey and Ben are on — only to discover they're not on the plane, it's just a test run of a game Minos intends to play on their actual flight.

A flight attendant screams as a plane goes down

The new ending worked — audiences loved it and the film was a massive hit, grossing $155 million worldwide and spawning a sequel.

Sony

9.Pretty in Pink was originally supposed to end with Molly Ringwald's Andie ending up with Jon Cryer's Duckie, but test audiences hated it so much they reshot the now-famous ending where she ends up with Andrew McCarthy's Blaine.

The stars of the film

The ending proved to be very popular with audiences — the movie was a hit — but Hughes wasn't so sure that what they came up with was, in fact, better than the original ending. Unhappy with the change, he essentially retold the same story with his next film, Some Kind of Wonderful. This time, though, the lead (played by Eric Stoltz) walked off into the sunset with his outcast friend, Watts, and not the rich kid, Amanda.

The stars of Some Kind of Wonderful
Paramount / ??Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

10.Deep Blue Sea had to reshoot their ending to fix one thing test audiences absolutely hated about it.

A shark bites a scientists arm

Deep Blue Sea was about genetically engineered sharks that go on a rampage in a scientific facility, and the thing test audiences hated was that the scientist played by Saffron Burrows survived.

Warner Bros.

The audience wanting Burrows' character dead shocked director Renny Harlin, who told Crave Online, "In our minds, she was the heroine and we thought saving her was the key.”

Burrows stands on a plank above shark-infested water

11.Fatal Attraction originally had a much darker and low-key ending, which test audiences found utterly unsatisfying...and sent the filmmakers scrambling to come up with something better.

Close attacks Douglas with a knife in the film's climax

Screenwriter James Dearden and director Adrian Lyne soon hatched the now-famous ending where Alex sneaks into Dan's home and the two have a knock-down, drag-out fight before Dan's wife (played by Anne Archer) shoots her dead. However, before they could do the reshoots, they ran into a problem: Glenn Close didn't want to do it.